Description

Star Wars is a first-person shooter based around the final scenes of the original Star Wars film. It first appeared for arcade coin-operated machines and was subsequently converted to other gaming platforms.

You take on the role of Luke Skywalker, aiming to destroy the Death Star. In the first phase you have to pass swarms of TIE Fighters, including dogfighting the one piloted by Darth Vader himself. In the second phase the station's surface is protected by laser towers, third involves attacking its weakest spot - the unprotected exhaust port - with proton torpedos. Your X-Wing starts with six shields, but more can be awarded for good performance. Complete the game and it loops back around at ever-increasing difficulty.

The game uses vector graphics, which allow lots of action at high speed on comparatively slow systems.

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Arcade version

The original coin-op Star Wars game was built using Ed Rotberg's incomplete spaceflight fortress assault game entitled Warp Speed. Add the joystick from his Military Battlezone and some licensed properties, and voila -- Star Wars!

Commodore 64 versions

There were two licensed conversions of Star Wars: The Arcade Game for the Commodore 64. The first was a cartridge by Parker Brothers. This version used simple sprites for the TIE fighters and clusters of dots to represent the fireballs. Several years later, Domark put out a much more faithful conversion which used vector graphics for all the game elements. Unfortunately while it was quite accurate, it suffered from poor frame rates which often made it difficult to play.

Packaging

My hazy memory recalls: The front of the box contained an embedded LED that blinked slowly, like once every 3 seconds. I believe the LED was part of R2D2's head poking out of the top of the X-Wing.

References to the game

In the 1984 Christmas horror film Gremlins some of the Gremlin's can be seen briefly playing the original Arcade cabinet version of Star Wars.

Rogue Squadron III

Boss-keys

Resourceful programmer tricks #2: The function keys serve as multiple different functional boss-keys, information about the programmer, and other neat little functions -- way above and beyond a typical boss-key. Poke around the keyboard while the game is running and see what you find!

Related Web Sites

The History of Star Wars Video Games (The people at Gamespot have written a great article about the history of Star Wars games on the PC and on the Consoles, goining back as far as the days of the Atari 2600.)